Commercial aircraft have meal and beverage carts for providing meal and beverage service to passengers aboard the aircraft. The cart is wheeled and configured to travel up and down the aisles between the rows of seats. When not in use, each cart is stowed in a bay specifically configured to accommodate the cart. The galleys within the aircraft typically have multiple bays for stowing multiple carts. Retention devices secure and retain the cart within its bay.
Presently, passengers requiring use of a wheelchair are not able to use their own personal wheelchair. An agent of the airline or the airport temporarily provides a wheelchair that the passenger uses through the airport and down the ramp to the passenger entry door of the aircraft. Some commercial aircraft then have a narrow wheelchair specifically configured to move up and down the aisles of the aircraft so that the passenger can get to their assigned seat and then depart the aircraft when their destination is reached. This narrowly configured wheelchair is not intended for use other than onboard the aircraft and therefore is permanently retained onboard the aircraft.
Once the passenger departs the aircraft, another wheelchair is brought to the passenger entry door so that the passenger can travel from the arrival gate and through the airport. Thus, while traveling though the arrival and departure airports passengers cannot use their personal-owned wheelchair because there is not stowage space available onboard the aircraft for stowing the personally-owned wheelchairs. However, new Department of Transportation (DOT) rules are requiring commercial airlines to provide stowage space for personally-owned wheelchairs.
Also, passengers traveling by commercial air typically generate a lot of waste material that the flight attendants pick up just before the aircraft lands at the destination airport. Typically the flight attendants walk up and down the aisles with plastic bags to put the waste material in. This takes a significant amount of time and the flight attendants often get their hands and clothes soiled. Once the waste material is collected from the passengers, the flight attendants must then sort the waste material by hand in the galley or, alternatively, the filled plastic bags are transported to a sorting facility. Thus, when collecting the waste material onboard an aircraft the waste material is not collected in a manner best suited for recycling.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure herein is presented.